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Australia warns about global reach of Islamic State group at violent extremism summit

Xinhua, June 11, 2015 Adjust font size:

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has warned about the global reach of the Islamic State group to delegates at a two-day violent extremism summit which began in Sydney on Thursday.

Local media reported Abbott told delegates at the first day of the regional summit that if it could, IS would come for every person and government with one message "Submit or die".

"This is terrorism with global ambitions," Abbott said.

He said IS controls an area as large as Italy in eastern Syria and northern and western Iraq, while its associates control parts of Libya and Nigeria.

The group is also active on the Horn of Africa and parts of the Arabian Peninsula and it has ambitions to establish bases in Southeast Asia.

"The tentacles of the death cult have extended even here as we discovered with the Martin Place siege (in Sydney's CBD) last December," Abbott said.

He said in the past year IS and its cronies carried out attacks in Sydney and in Melbourne, as well as in France, Belgium, Canada, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, Jordan, Denmark, Kenya and the United States.

"You can't negotiate with an entity like this, you can only fight it," he said.

Australian Attorney-General George Brandis opened the two-day event, telling delegates that governments must be resolute in standing up to groups such as IS, and said countries must not give such groups the legitimacy they seek.

"We must not let them succeed," he said.

"Through their perverse and wrong interpretation of Islam, they are attempting not only to destroy their own societies, but to divide our communities and to set us against each other."

"Instead, we must be resolute as governments, as communities in standing up to these people and to the false and evil doctrines which they pursue."

Representatives from 25 countries, along with social media executives, attended the Countering Violent Extremism summit to compare strategies to stop online radicalization.

Executives from Google, Twitter and Facebook will also be taking part in the summit to attempt to counter extremist propaganda and the flow of young people to conflict zones in the Middle East. Endi